David Lynch’s ‘My Beautiful Broken Brain’ Is As Difficult As It Is Beautiful

Much like its Lynchian themes and focus, My Beautiful Broken Brain is a difficult documentary to place. At some points, like when its protagonist, stroke victim Lotje Sodderland, painfully struggles to remember the word “the,” it’s acutely sad. Other times, when Sodderland’s self-depreciating sense of humor break through the doc’s narrative, it’s surprisingly funny. However, the one word I would use to describe Netflix’s new documentary is enlightening.

Executive produced by David Lynch, the film follows the aforementioned Sodderland, who miraculously survived a hemorrhagic stroke. After the stroke, she finds herself in a foreign version of the world she once knew, unable to process logic and language. It’s a difficult subject with a protagonist who is more than sympathetic, but what sets this film apart is its brilliant narrative structure. The documentary was pieced together from over 150 hours of footage. It’s through its narrative structure and the film’s visuals, which are used to mimic what Sodderland sees, that this movie becomes more than just a good documentary. My Beautiful Broken Brain is a powerful and painful look into Sodderland’s life.

The first third of the documentary is unabashedly difficult to watch, which oddly works in this case. The film’s beginning works to humanize Sodderland and show how big an effect this stroke has had on this bright woman. Watching it feels vulnerable and unpredictable. It’s in this part that she is most often seen struggling for words and grasping for answers to basic questions. As she’s asked who the little girl in pictures is, you can see that Sodderland knows the answer to the question and desperately wants to respond. However, she can’t. You can almost feel Sodderland’s pain, wanting to connect and understand the world around her but forced into near silence and confusion. This first third practically feels claustrophobic, with the parameters of what she can and cannot do and can and cannot understand becoming oppressively tighter. Though nothing can ever completely capture what it’s like to be Sodderland, My Beautiful Broken Brain does a wonderful job of explaining what it might be like to live in her world.

This painful introduction makes the rest of the film all the more engaging and wondrous. When you see the interpretations of the colors and dimensions Sodderland sees on a day-to-day basis, they aren’t merely interesting. They’re tinged by sadness yet made all the more enchanting by the unwilling sacrifices she has paid for them. I’ve seen other specials about how people experience the world post stroke, and few have felt as human and relatable as this doc. A lot of that bizarre humanity can be credited to David Lynch’s involvement in the project.

Early on, Sodderland compares how she experiences the world to the Red Room in Twin Peaks. It’s one of those comparisons that simultaneously makes no sense and complete sense. However, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that our protagonist isn’t just a fan of the universes David Lynch has created. Lynch’s work has helped Sodderland to internally normalize her altered life and relate to the world. There are lot of amazing moments in this film, one of the most notable being the devastating consequences of her time as the subject of a neurological experiment. But I found the most interesting and moving moment to be Sodderland’s meeting with her idol — David Lynch.

Maybe that’s my inner TV nerd talking, but when Sodderland finally met Lynch over video chat, I was captivated. That moment felt like more than a loving fan meeting her idol. It felt like Sodderland finally being about to talk to someone who understood her on some deeper level that most people couldn’t. My Beautiful Broken Brain is a film that explores how incredible and amazing the human mind can be, but more than that, it’s a film that explores the importance of community and what it means to be human.